Road Warrior Kitchen: Radicchio Bean Salad

One of my hobbies is buying cookbooks (sometimes out-of-print obscure ones) and then continuing to cook the same seven things. Every now and then, though, I catch them watching me disdainfully as I ignore them yet again. Usually I just shield my eyes and get on with what I was doing but every now and then I am overcome by guilt and declare, "Okay fine, let's go through one of you mothers and see what looks good and interesting and not too complicated."

One such cookbook is that of our Italian queen and collective great-great-grand-nonna Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. If you want to learn to *properly* cook Italian, Nonna Marcella is *the* canonical starting point. 

There are all kinds of wonders in this cookbook, with all different levels of complexity. Knowing the Italians do love their beans, I was flipping through it one evening looking for something new to do with my most recent Rancho Gordo haul that was simple yet classic, and it wasn't long before the page-flipping gods blessed me with this find, exactly the type of thing I was looking for:

In case the print is too tiny for your ancient eyes, that's six count 'em SIX ingredients (and three of them are salt, pepper, and olive oil, which almost don't really count):

• Cranberry beans
• Radicchio (Treviso is indeed lovely but plain old round or even endives are fine)
• Salt
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Red wine vinegar
• Fresh black pepper.

Now that's the sort of thing I can handle whipping up after a long run or a night at the track (assuming the beans are already cooked).

The first time I made this, it was pure luck that my most recent Rancho Gordo shipment had in fact included cranberry beans, but really, you could use just about any medium-size brown bean you like and it would work just fine.

Radicchio Bean Salad

Step 1: Make the beans. Here's how I do it, many thanks once again to Rancho Gordo. This time I didn't have cranberries but these Christmas limas worked just as well (though they're a bit bigger). I used half a package (half a pound dry).

Step 2: Slice up the radicchio. One head of radicchio (which is what I used) is usually about half a pound or so once you've trimmed it. Peel off & discard the outer leaves & give the entire head a quick rinse & dry. Quarter it & slice out the core from each of the four pieces.

Then slice each quarter of radicchio into ~1/4 inch ribbons:

Marcella recommends a soak in cold water after slicing followed by a spin-dry (the soaking can reduce some of the bitterness of radicchio if it bothers you), but tbh I usually skip this step.

 

These kind of elongated dudes are Treviso radicchio, which is a bit milder & less bitter than the round kind, but maybe also not as common in your standard American grocery. I have heard them described as sort of halfway between a round radicchio and red endive.

Step 3: Add the beans (warm) to the radicchio and toss. If using canned beans or dried ones that aren't fresh out of the pot, give them a spin in the microwave to warm them up.

Step 4.  Add olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper to taste and toss again. Part of the beauty of this recipe is that you don't need to measure these things, just add a little of each, taste, and adjust according to your palette. (Probably start with less of everything since you can always add more but can't really take it back out if you add too much. No one likes a soupy, salty salad.)

I will suggest that this recipe really benefits from maybe more pepper than you think, so be a bit brave there. 

Congratulations, you are done! Bon appétit!

Radicchio bean salad (served alongside the viral "marry me" chicken 😅) 

💡 Variations: This dish is shockingly perfect as-is, but if it occurs to you to throw in some herbs or parm other seasonings or experiment with other types of vinegar, I won't tell the Italian cuisine police. Life is short, you do you!

⏲️ Ultra-time-saving version: You can use canned beans, obviously, and if you can't be bothered to chop up radicchio, you could always look for a bag of chopped radicchio or if not that, something similarly bitter and hearty. 

Obviously the point of this recipe is that it is super simple and straightforward, but it's a cooking truism that the simpler and straight-forward the recipe is, the more attention to detail and quality of ingredients is the difference between "edible, just okay" and divine; there's just nowhere to hide the way there is when you have say a ton of strongly-flavored ingredients or a rich sauce or are actually cooking things (ie with heat). Now, some nights you're quite happy with "edible, just okay" and just need a food in you/the fam. But let me tell you a few little secrets for those days when you have some extra time and are more interested in divinity.

Divinity Tips

1. Use fresh (ie not ancient), high-quality, dried heirloom beans. With generic commodity dried beans, it's hard to know how long they've been sitting around in a warehouse before they get to you. Dried beans really start going downhill after a year, are noticeably worse after 2-3 years, and (like most foods), after five years most naturally occurring vitamins will have almost fully degraded. The other thing about commodity beans (like most other commodity foods) is that they've been bred over the years more for ease of farming, high yields, and transporting well than for tastiness. Of course I love my Rancho Gordo beans but other solid heirloom producers include Zürsun, Purcell, Baer's, and North Bay Trading Co. In a recipe with so few ingredients, it really does make a difference. The texture of high-quality heirloom beans alone is 🤯👌💯. Try it and see!

2. Use fresh radicchio (or endives or whatever)--again, it really does make a difference if your goal is true divinity.

3. If you wash or soak the radicchio, be sure to fully dry it (or fully let it dry). Nothing makes a good dressed salad mediocre like damp veggies.

4. Use fresh-cracked black pepper (vs. the pre-ground powdery stuff). I love both these and these from Burlap & Barrel, which distributes all kinds of fair-trade spices (though there are plenty of other good ones out there). Good freshly-cracked black pepper is transcendent! 😋

5. Use good-quality olive oil. Again, if you are used to buying kind of "whatever" olive oil, there are certainly dishes where that will have less of an impact, but in a dish this simple and straightforward, it's really noticeable. If you don't believe me, buy some "meh" olive oil and some good stuff and try them side by side. How do you know if it's good? Tl;dr, look for 1) extra virgin, 2) dark-colored glass or metal bottle/tin, 3) from one specifically identified place, and 4) a specific harvest date (ideally recent). Identifying the specific cultivar of olive used is also a good sign.

This is a bottle we bought last summer or fall I think and have refilled several times with the same brand, which our nearby hippie grocery store sells in bulk. 

Good-quality olive oil is made in many different places (including California, Italy, Germany, and Spain) and which you go for is more a matter of individual preference than any one country having *the* objectively best olive oil.

And with that, today's edition of Road Warrior Kitchen is concluded. Enjoy!!